Feminist News

Pakistani Woman Stoned to Death for Marrying A Man of Her Own Choosing

A 25-year-old Pakistani woman was brutally and publicly murdered by her family this week for marrying the man she loved.

Farzana Parveen married a man several months ago following a years-long engagement. She was three months pregnant. Her family did not approve of the marriage because they did not arrange it, and the husband believes they were trying to get money from him. After the couple married, Parveen's family threatened them and filed an abduction case against the husband. On the couple's way to the courthouse Tuesday to contest the abduction claim, 20 of Parveen's extended family members waited outside for them and started beating them with batons and bricks from a nearby construction site until she died.

"I killed my daughter as she had insulted all of our family by marrying a man without our consent, and I have no regret over it," the father was quoted saying to a police investigator. He is currently under arrest and facing murder charges.

"HRCP is appalled by the manner of Farzana Parveen's death just a few yards from the Lahore High Court on Tuesday," said the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a statement. "Her only crime was to marry of her own free will, a right that the law recognises for all adult citizens but one where the state has failed to prevent abuse and violence."

HRCP reports that almost 900 women were murdered in 2013 in so-called honor killings, and many perpetrators who commit violence against women are acquitted or given light sentences due to poor police work and prosecutions and the unwillingness of the state to confront the issue.